Last year was hard. I had only lost my mother 7 months before that and I remember feeling like every commercial for Mother's Day, every time I heard my girlfriends talk happily about their Mother's Day plans... it all felt like an assault. It still does, a little, but I feel so much healthier now. Mostly now I get sad more about the things I'm forgetting then feeling that fresh pain of losing her. I really do feel like a year and a half on I'm forgetting my mom a little. I know it's inevitable. And my life has changed so much because of her loss, that it would be hard to imagine her in this life I have now. A lot of things have gotten much harder to deal with, and I've had to feel more like an adult then a daughter since then. Mostly I just still feel like this all isn't fair.

In the last year and a half I've had people tell me how amazed they are with how well I've dealt. But really, that's silly. Of course I'm dealing well. I have an amazing, wonderful life. I have a great job, a nice house, two snuggly puppies, a brother who is my best friend, old friends who are my sisters, and newer friends who add so much to my life. And most of all, a husband who is more then I could have dreamed up for myself. So for all the bad things I've inherited with the loss of my mom, I have so many wonderful things.

(my mom and me on a Photo Day)

This week I've been feeling bad about it being Mother's Day, predictably, and I think that's ok. I do feel sad, but I still celebrate my mom every day. She was really an amazing woman and she left me an amazing gift. She had friends who were so great and true that they check on me like I'm their kid now. One of them called me yesterday and told me that she wanted me to have some sort of mom for Mother's Day, and was I free to do something? And then she told me that I better be prepared for her to be nosey about my life for the rest of hers.

So to all the mothers in my life, a very Happy Mother's Day to you. I'm amazed by mothers and their ability to create life and make it beautiful.